I finally got Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 off the runway and its far more gorgeous and far more grueling than I ever imagined

Date:
Sun, 02 Aug 2026 21:00:00 +0000

Ive been trying my flying skills out on the gorgeous Flight Simulator 2024 at last. Brace yourself its been a very rough journey. Flight Simulator 2024
has become a bit of a meme in my house. Its basically the only game that my non-gaming partner and I were equally excited about on its release. Every
time Ive gotten my hands on a new gaming machine, the immediate question was can it run Flight Simulator ?, to which the answer was always, regrettably, no.

Which is why when I recently picked up a second-hand Xbox Series X and subscribed to Game Pass Ultimate , there was a lot of excitement when I realized we could finally play Flight Simulator in all its graphical glory. I jumped at the chance to finally lose my chocks, slip the surly bonds of
earth, and crash my plane into the face of god.

My eldest brother was a bit of a Flight Sim nerd back in
the day. So my impression of flight simulators was pretty firmly defined by their late 1980s incarnations essentially just some flat polygons and super-aliased lines in two-point perspective, accompanied by a bunch of truly incomprehensible dials. Having utterly ignored the development of flight simulators ever since, its safe to say that when I saw how far theyd come in the last almost four decades, it was a bit of a shock to the system.

A lot of the praise that was
heaped on Flight Simulator 2024 when it was released centered on how gorgeous the graphics were. And even playing now, some two years down the line, that praise holds up. Lighting effects are exquisite, with sunsets over enormous bodies of water like Lake Titicaca looking almost absurdly true to life. Weather effects and realistic day/night cycles only emphasise this, making
the world around you feel fluid and organic.

But the biggest graphical draw for me is knowing that theres a whole world meticulously rebuilt from satellite data for me to soar over. Flying down the Grand Canyon, the scale is still absolutely breathtaking, and I couldnt
resist the temptation to gun my little prop plane down over all the rapids in the Colorado River. Likewise, when I flew over Machu Picchu, the landscape is truly stunning, and theres a real joy in winding along the surrounding valleys, watched over by lofty mountains. The level of detail is genuinely mind-blowing. While cities arent quite as perfectly rendered as the
landscape the games algorithm makes a lot of assumptions when filling in the gaps from the satellite data visiting places you know well is genuinely a
bit uncanny. I landed my little prop plane in my street, and it felt a little surreal to stare at my own front door when I was sat mere feet away inside. Flight Sim also does a wonderful job of recreating local landmarks: it was so fun checking out Baths Royal Crescent, even if the games algorithm insisted
on popping little corner shops at the base of every Georgian townhouse.

Given its based on satellite data, some areas are a little less exciting than others. For example, I decided to check out the thick Congolese rainforest
and was rewarded with a flat, unbroken canopy for 100 miles in every direction. I know, right? Bro shocked a rainforest contains trees. But not every journey is going to be a scenic smorgasbord, so some flights are going to be more droolworthy than others.

Still, playing Flight Simulator 2024 is one heck of a visual treat. And I would regularly fire up the game just so I could check out a favorite
landmark or explore a new patch of sky.

Okay, so weve established that Flight Simulator 2024 is a very
pretty game. But theres a reason there are as many flying enthusiasts working toward getting their pilots license as there are casual sightseers playing
the game. Because, underneath all the gloss and sheen lies the cold steel endoskeleton of an unflinchingly brutal simulator.

Having invested 12 hours in Flight Simulator 2024 so far, Ive gone from being truly, hauntingly terrible at it to simply being really bad. Honestly, Ive heard the word stall so many times at this point, Ill likely still wake up with it echoing in my ears in my sweat-drenched retirement home bed some half a century from now. Even though Ive now qualified for my commercial licence,
I feel nothing but pity for the virtual passengers that board my plane, as I know they have at best a 40% chance of reaching their destination in one piece.

Part of the reason for this is that the simulation is just staggeringly realistic. Theres an enormous number of variables to manage, all of which you can manage via controller shortcuts or direct from the cockpit controls, if you really want to double down on the masochism. Get the balance of these slightly wrong for example, getting your pitch a few degrees off or mismanaging your throttle and youll find yourself losing height too fast or hearing the Cessna 172s dreaded stall warning. Don't get
me wrong. Ive stopped making truly cringeworthy mistakes. I no longer get screamed at by air traffic control for failing to radio for clearance to hit the runway or drop out of the air ten seconds after takeoff because Ive set
my throttle too low. Im pretty good at using trim to maintain my attitude while at cruising altitude, and I can comfortably use dead reckoning to navigate my way along my intended flight path.

But I still find landing a painful and protracted process of plate spinning that I understand in principle and yet rarely manage to nail in practice. I think Ive hit the perfect glide path, only to find myself coming in far too low, forcing me to gun my throttle like Maverick just to avoid myself ending up a smear on the cliff face. Or I execute what I think is the perfect flare to raise my nose as I hit the tarmac, only to realize Im going too fast and rapidly jackknife my plane face down into the runway. As Douglas Adams remarked, its not the fall that kills you: its hitting the ground at 85
knots.

All of this sounds like it should be deeply frustrating. And it is. But its also weirdly compelling: the more I flop off the end of the runway like a cat dripping off the edge of a table or bounce around on the tarmac like a
drunken rabbit on a trampoline, the more I double down and want to nail it
the next time. Because theres something exciting about the unlimited horizons beckoning you onward.

Link to news story:

https://www.techradar.com/gaming/xbox-series-x-s/i-finally-got-flight-simulato r-2024-off-the-runway-and-its-far-more-gorgeous-and-far-more-grueling-than-i-e ver-imagined

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* Origin: capitolcityonline.net * KY, USA (42:17/7)